On the Way: Stories

By Cyn Vargas

Cyn Vargas's debut explores the whims and follies of the heart. When a mother disappears in Guatemala, her daughter refuses to accept she's gone; a divorced DMV employee falls in love during a driving lesson; a young girl shares a well-kept family secret; a bad haircut is the last straw in a crumbling marriage.
This elegant and lovely set of stories by a master of the craft won widespread praise in its first printing; this revised new edition promises to bring her work to the wider audience she deserves. Join us on this trip from the frozen north to the tropical south, and through the hopes and fears and dreams and visions that keep us cycling through new destinations and old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tortoise Books
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948954563

Book preview

GUATE

We were going to Guatemala for the first time since Mom left at eighteen. She often mentioned it as if it were a magical place with volcanoes that spurted lava and black sand that led to the ocean. After I graduated eighth grade, she took me as a present, saying I finally was old enough to enjoy the country. Had I known that would be the last time I’d ever see Mom and hear her voice, I would’ve done anything not to have gone.

At La Aurora International Airport, we rolled our bags past a throng of people who were holding flowers and balloons and stuffed animals. Mom’s aunt, Blanca, was supposed to meet us there. I had only seen her in pictures. She looked like a raisin in each one, short and dark and wrinkled.

There she is, Mom announced, taking my hand and leading me to her. Tia Bianca was even smaller than in the pictures. The bouquet of strange pink and orange flowers she was holding covered half of her.

Mom and Tia Blanca hugged and cried. A man with a giant straw hat came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some mangos or a machete. I understood Spanish, but didn’t speak it well. I just smiled and shook my head and said, Gracias. He nodded and walked away.

Oh, you’re so pretty, Tia Blanca said. She had learned English at university. Even though we were the same height, she wrapped me in her arms. Her sweater smelled like vanilla.

On the cab ride in, Mom pointed out special places she remembered. You see the cemetery? Right there. They bury people above ground and then paint the tombs bright colors. Death is not to be mourned. It’s a part of life.

The cemetery was on top of a hill and the bright orange, blue, and pink squares looked like candy spilled from the sky.

You see how the volcanoes look so close? They’re really miles and miles away. That volcano there still is active and spits out lava. Now, look over there. That volcano is active, but instead of lava it has water. It erupted a few decades ago and flooded the downtown area.

We swirled through the streets of Guatemala City. There were so many honking cars that the sound was like a thousand geese in the road. Tia Blanca had fallen asleep, her chin against her chest, hands folded in her lap. Mom held my hand, something we hadn’t done since I was young. With the other, she pointed out more places—the school she had gone to that was just letting out, kids in blue uniforms running for freedom. She pointed at all the skinny stray dogs in the road, pointed at the street vendors: auto parts, bread, whole dead chickens hanging off a line, bananas, clothes, even goldfish. She smiled and squeezed my hand each time she said something.

Selma, look, she said, and pointed to a tiny shop with Selma’s Panaderia scrawled across the window in black paint. I used to go there every week to get bread as a kid. I said when I had a daughter, I would name her Selma.

The first week in Guatemala, Mom and I were inseparable. We stayed with Tia Blanca in a house where she lived alone. She started calling Mom and I las gemelas. It made my mom laugh that we were called twins.

We shared a bedroom with a white fan and a bed covered with a loud, dandelion-patterned blanket, which was stitched in different places with various colors of thread. Every morning, Mom and I would walk along many makeshift booths, where generations of women dressed in Mayan clothes of patterned hues tried to make a living. We would buy sweets stuffed with fruit, earrings made of feathers, and hair clips in shapes of flowers or bows that we’d use to keep our bangs out of our faces in the fierce sun. We’d pay with creased bills that had in the center a beautiful green bird with a red belly and long tail that Mom told me had been hunted into extinction. We bought bracelets with our names burned into a wooden piece surrounded by colorful beads. They made Mom’s too small for her wrist, but she still paid the lady, who had a baby sleeping in a sling across her chest. Mom gave her bracelet to me, and I wore both hers and mine together.

I took pictures of Mom and Tia Blanca: Mom’s arm over her aunt’s shoulder, both of them leaning against the door of Tia Blanca’s house, the windows covered in wrought iron bars that twisted like thorny stems.

We went to the beach, where the sand was black and the ocean was clear. I took a snapshot of Mom in her swimsuit, standing in water up to her calves. She stared into the endless water, the rose tattoo on her thigh glistening. She had gotten it when I was little, and told me that the rose was just for me. In summer, when Mom wore shorts, I would trace the rose’s outline with my fingers while we watched cartoons. I’d tell her that when I got older I was going to get a tattoo just for her, too.

The last picture I took of Mom was of her sitting on the front stoop and eating a guayaba, with a stray dog with ribs like hardened rainbows sprawled at her feet. When I took the picture, she laughed and said, Selma. How many pictures is that now? Two thousand in a week? She raised her guayaba, the reddish orange pulp inside shining in the morning sun.

The streets swarmed with cars, people, and even a couple of horses among the dogs.

You feeling OK? she said.

My stomach hurts.

She put her hand on my forehead. Well, you don’t have a fever. Maybe it’s something you ate. You didn’t drink any milk, did you?

I said nothing.

Selma, I told you this is not like the States. Not to eat anything dairy.

She asked Tia Blanca, who was waving at some passing neighbors, to make me some tea and to make sure I lied down.

I’m going to pick up some groceries, Mom said.

Be careful, Adriana, Tia Blanca said and went upstairs to boil the water.

Don’t go to the beach without me, I said, rubbing my stomach.

When do I ever do anything without my twin? She kissed my forehead and held my wrist. The bracelets rubbed against one another. Go on up and lie down. I’ll be back soon.

Her long curls swayed as she crossed the street. Her skin had darkened like toast in the few days we were there. She dodged speeding cars and slow dogs, turning when she got across to wave at me and point at the door of the house. I waved back. She smiled, and I could see her bright eyes despite all the sunshine. She turned the corner into a crowd of morning chaos.

Later that afternoon, I woke up from my nap expecting to see Mom in the kitchen with Tia Blanca, drinking café con leche and eating the pastries we had bought that morning. But Tia Blanca was alone, her hands wrapped around a mug.

Is Mom back yet? I asked, feeling a little bit better.

No. Not yet. Maybe the buses took long, she said. But the wrinkles across her forehead deepened, and continued to do so as the hours dragged on.

By sunset, Tia Blanca had called every family she knew who had a phone, which wasn’t many. Then she called the police. An hour later, two pudgy men in gray uniforms arrived, with heavy badges tugging their shirts downward and matching thick mustaches. Tia Blanca sputtered that Mom was visiting from the States and would never have left me for that long. Then they began to question me. You an American? Why did you come here? They asked about jewelry Mom was wearing, and had I noticed anyone strange following us since we arrived. When they left, they took the only developed pictures of her that we had: the four we had taken together in a photo booth at the airport, printed on a single strip. In two of them we were making kissing faces; in one we were sticking out our tongues; and in another we were smiling, looking right into the camera lens. Tia Blanca cried and I went to bed.

That night, I dreamt of her. Mom sprawled in her bathing suit on the sand that was as black as her hair. The rose tattoo, faded crimson with two green leaves that curled at the ends, sprouted from her hip. The waves were rolling in, almost touching the tips of her feet that pointed toward the sky.

Without looking at